Digital Work Habits: Research Report

Transcription

1 Digital Work Habits: Research Report Contents Executive Summary...2 Methodology...3 Findings: Who Responded...3 Work Styles...4 Risks...7 Other Digital Habits...8 Conclusions and Recommendations...9 Appendix...11

2 Executive Summary Back in 2010, Microsoft reported there were approximately one billion Outlook installations worldwide. i It s not news that is the hub of the digital work environment. However, it s easy to overlook that is a collaboration tool the go-to platform for communicating and coordinating with co-workers, partners, and customers. can be a powerful productivity booster, but it can also be a time sink, a source of embarrassment if misused, or at worst, a security risk. and other collaboration tools in the workplace are also a topic for serious study. One of the key findings in this area is that our ability to quickly connect with others has led to a new style of work. According to London School of Economics Professor of Sociology Judy Wajcman, work in the digital office could be characterized as highly interrupted. But as she delved more deeply she noticed that people have actually integrated all these technologies into their work processes and organized their work in particular ways. They didn t use the concept of interruptions. They just thought this is how they do their work now. ii In the spirit of Wajcman, we decided to learn about usage in the digital office. Not only did we survey metrics daily volumes, time spent managing s but we were also interested in understanding the user behaviors surrounding s. Our survey bears out Wajcman s overall assessment. Almost 45% of those surveyed are receiving between 50 and 300 s per day. While s are now an established part of our work, at some point even Wajcman understands they become an interruption. The survey shows that 20% are immersed in their inbox between 30 and 60 minutes, and another 16% are spending over an hour per day, or more than five hours per week, organizing s. Time spent searching, categorizing, and deleting on a daily basis is time taken away from the work that is supposed to be enabling. Has this interrupted work style led to an increase in communication mishaps more accidental reply-alls or internal s seen by clients or an meant for a coworker sent to the CEO? Our findings indicate that miscommunications are not an unusual occurrence: 62% reported some kind of damaging being sent. While the consequences varied, the most common result reported was embarrassment of the parties involved in exchange (64%). However, there were more serious outcomes, including job loss (12%) and even compliance violations (6%).

3 Methodology In September of 2012, Varonis published an 11-question survey, which was distributed to IT personnel and security staff. We received 127 responses from 92 different organizations. The survey was constructed to: Measure the daily volume employees receive Assess how workers manage their , and how much time they spend doing this Determine the frequency and severity of mistakes Understand how employees handle other digital distractions at work Findings: Who Responded In categorizing the responses, the sample was almost evenly split between small-to-medium sized businesses (typically defined to be fewer than 1000 employees) and the enterprise environment. We received a wide range of job titles from CEO to IT analysts and everything in between. To simplify our analysis we organized titles into three broad categories: C-level, Manager, and Employee. Not surprisingly, more than 90% of survey responders came from the Manager and Employee categories this should be kept in mind when reviewing the results.

4 Overall managers and employees are heavily engaged with their s. About 45% receive between 50 and 300 s per day and another 17% are in the message bucket. There s even an elite being bombarded with over 300 daily s. Our repsondents are also conscientous about reading their . About 14% claimed there are no unread s in their inbox. And another 23% have fewer than 10 unread s. How much time is all this taking? The largest segment, or 44%, are spending up to 30 minutes per day taming and managing their s. With this -centric sample, we re not surprised that over 20% are spending up to 1 hour and sizeable minority (16%) are focused on managing their inboxes more than one hour per day. Work Styles One question we wanted to look at is whether there is a relationship between job title and volumes. Wajcman has conjectured that our digital work habits have been influenced by a flattening in organizational structure so that both managers and their groups are tasked with greater workload and the s that come with this. To explore this, we categorized all the job titles into C-level, Manager, and Employee. We were especially interested in comparing Employees against Managers. Our results show the Employee s daily volume is skewed towards the higher end, with more than 25% receiving over 100 s per day. The Manager group is a little more even-keeled with a mere 6% experiencing over 100 s per day and a little over half dealing with a manageable A statistical test for independence between Employee and Manager indicates there s some evidence for saying these two groups have different patterns.

5 It is possible to interpret our results as validating Wajcman s insights about some non-managers having taken over tasks from other employees. volumes are a signature of their growing responsibilities as their network of contacts has expanded. C-levels are clearly immersed in their . Our sample size for this statistic is small, but over one-third reported receiving over 100 s per day. But it is not surprising that CEOs will see extremes: as the hub in an chain, a disproportionate number of s should naturally land in the CEO s inbox. We also tried to pin down the organizational habits of users. Respondents were asked to classify themselves as filers (they leave a clean inbox), hoarders (never delete, but file and tag), mixture (some filing and some hoarding), and out-of-control (given up on organizing). Over 34% of those surveyed the filers are emptying their on a daily basis (after reading them, of course). The hoarders make up 19% of the survey group. Around 40% are a hybrid of both patterns. And there was a small but telling niche of 6% that has admitted to completely giving up on managing their inboxes. We undertook an analysis comparing the time spent on s between the three derived job categories. After testing for independence, we are on firmer statistical ground in saying that Employees and Managers share similar time profiles. At the extreme end, between 13% and 20% of both groups report spending more than 1 hour managing their s. And they share similar percentages in the minute rate: 22% of Employees, and 25% of managers.

6 This suggests Wajcman s point that is simply part of the work culture, not just an interruption, even at the top of the corporate hierarchy. To validate this view, one only has to look at the C-level group. Although the sample size is small, it s still revealing that executive suite is reporting spending over 1 hour per day managing and organizing s. We also wanted to look at daily volumes against company size. We see similar profiles in the SMB range, and into the lower end of the enterprise space. It further validates that is as much a part of the office environment as cube walls and furniture. Another way to break down the time spent on is to view it through the lens of the different organizing classifications filers, hoarders, hybrids, and out-of-control. We compared these categories against the time spent on s. The most revealing pattern is in the group that has given up on their s. It s characterized by extremes: almost 30% spend over an hour managing and organizing, and approximately 60% spend under 5 minutes. Perhaps they spend a few minutes looking for a specific subject line and then give up, or else for an important , they spend hours searching? For the other categories it s clear that investing in some management pays off in terms of reducing time spent in the inbox.

7 In trying to understand whether employees were applying any technologies to help organize and manage s, we asked about the use of automatic rules. The results were not encouraging: more than 80% had few or no automatic procedures to handle their inbox. management for most remains a time-intensive and hands-on activity. Finally, we were curious about who was in the Inbox Zero club i.e., those reporting fewer than 10 unread s in their inbox. Again, we re not surprised that the Employee and Manager categories share a similar profile. The -focused C-level group, however, did reveal there were a few CEOs who couldn t keep up with their daily volumes. Risks With now a permanent part of our work routines, there s always a danger of misuse and other risks. We asked what was the most damaging someone from your company has sent by mistake? The answers came back in free form text. For anyone who has ever hit reply-all by accident most of us, I suspect many of the answers will not be surprising. Here are a few representative responses: Inappropriate jokes intended for one person sent to another Internal communications accidentally sent to clients Long cc list of addresses that should have been placed in bcc

8 As we might expect based on our own experiences, mistakes with addressing and other messaging mishaps are not uncommon. About 62% of our sample responded with a story about an accident. And as we also might have guessed, the consequences were typically limited to embarrassment: 64% reporting that one or more parties were embarrassed by an errant . There were more serious outcomes, however, including job loss (even at the CEO level), confidentially breaches, compliance issues, and even an incident of a corporate fine. Other Digital Habits As a final question, we wanted to briefly explore how workers are using their internet connection for non-worked related activities. Almost one-third reported they had no such use for the web; 43% scan web sites for news; 8.5% reported being addicted to Facebook; and 2% reported downloading or streaming music from web sites. The survey conforms with the popular cultural view of the Web as an on-line meeting and entertainment resource the digital equivalent of a virtual coffee break with on-line friends. For some, it is an additional source of interruption.

9 Conclusions and Recommendations We agree with Professor Wajcman s view that has become a vital part of the way we work. But it s clear that at some point high volumes can affect productivity, and mistakes can lead to potential legal and compliance issues affecting the entire organization. The survey reveals that large daily incoming traffic is a pattern seen across different sized companies and different job categories -- there s no escaping the onslaught. The bigger challenge is how to best to use and manage s, and reduce risks associated with correspondence. Some could simply decide not to keep pace with since it is, for many, a losing race. For those who do run this race, queuing theory has bad news: unless you can service s in less time than the inter-arrival periods on average, you ll end up with a very, very long queue of backlogged messages. For practical purposes, assuming you re one of the 17% in the 100 per day club, you ll have to run a below-five minute sprint per . A different viewpoint comes to us by way of the call center world. They ve had a global writable inbox, called an 800 number, for far longer than addresses have been around. But the telecom industry has evolved and developed different techniques, some of them transferable to the data messaging environment, to speed overall throughput while also improving the waiting experience. Wajcman s ideas on filtering are especially relevant here. Call centers use skills-based or expert routing to direct incoming connections to the appropriate resource. A similar routing concept could be applied to s, guiding messages to the right endpoint based on scanning content and subject lines. In fact, this is an approach taken by help and support desk ticketing software. The question is whether these specialized routing techniques will migrate into general enterprise platforms. Perhaps with even more sophisticated intelligence, a real-time dashboard could be embedded in the client app, display the delay time for sendees to expect based on their current unanswered s, schedules, and to-do tasks. In other words, servers may need to provide the equivalent of a call center s message-on-hold perhaps showing their position numbers after employees hit the send key. There are short-term solutions that have been taken up by some companies. Employees can broadcast an bankruptcy notice to force co-workers to resend what is likely the most important content. Other organizations have been experimenting with an blackout one day a week, wherein workers communicate using other means either phone calls or perhaps an antiquated house call.

10 Finally, here are a few quick tips that may help your experience today: Before clicking on send, create and follow a checklist especially if the is in any way sensitive Verify contact in the to:, cc:, and bcc: fields Check the subject line for errors and typos (spell check doesn t always work there) Verify that attachments are the documents you wish others to read Do you really want to hit send? If you re not using automatic rules to filter and route s, you should be Learn Outlook s query syntax to narrow down searches. For example, to:jane lists all s sent to Jane Experiment with turning off audible and visible notifications, or limiting them to VIPs, and then check on your own schedule i About that 1 billion Microsoft Office figure, ZDNet (2010) ii Executive Leadership and Innovation Interview: Professor Judy Wajcman Discusses the Sociology of Technology and the Work-Life Balance, Gartner, Inc. (2011)

11 Appendix The following charts show the survey results for questions not presented in the body of the report:

12 ABOUT VARONIS SYSTEMS Varonis is the leader in unstructured and semi-structured data governance software. Based on patented technology and a highly accurate analytics engine, Varonis solutions give organizations total visibility and control over their data, ensuring that only the right users have access to the right data at all times from all devices, all use is monitored, and abuse is flagged. Varonis makes digital collaboration secure, effortless and efficient so that people can create and share content easily with whom they must, and organizations can be confident their content is protected and managed efficiently. Voted one of the «Fast 50 Reader Favorites» on FastCompany.com, and winner of the SC Magazine Innovation, Product or Service of the Year, and Best Network Security Awards, Varonis has more than 4,500 installations worldwide and is headquartered in New York, with regional offices in Europe, Asia and Latin America. Varonis, the Varonis logo, DatAdvantage, DataPrivilege and the IDU Classification Framework are registered trademarks of Varonis Systems in the United States and/or other countries and Metadata Framework, DatAnywhere, and Data Transport Engine are under a registration process in the United States and/or other countries. All other product and company names and marks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners and are mentioned for identification purposes only. WORLDWIDE HEADQUARTERS 1250 Broadway, 31st Floor New York, NY Phone: sales@varonis.com EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA 55 Old Broad Street London, United Kingdom EC2M 1RX Phone: +44(0) sales-europe@varonis.com